Hello. My name is Nick and I'm relatively new to Filemaker. This is my first time posting on these forums. I looked around and didn't see this question asked, so if it's been answer already, please point me in the right direction. Thanks

My question is this: I want to be able to see and interact with a global field through a portal. I've actually gotten this to work before, but when i changed the fields to globals, it stopped working. I'll try to explain as best I can.

I have a table and a table occurence with identical fields. I've set it up so that the portal on my layout is validated if a certain field is set to "yes" from a popup menu. So when the value in this field is set to yes, I am able to see my second field inside the portal, which is on the table occurence. Likewise, if I set the first field to "No", the portal will hide the second field.

That makes 3 fields: Field 1, with a "yes/no" popup; Field 2, in the table occurence and also with a "yes/no" popup; and Field 3, a calculation that tells the portal when to display Field 2. It says Case(Field 1 = "yes"; Field 2).

So I have gotten this to work with regular fields. However, as soon as I turned Field 2 into a global field, it stopped working. No matter what value was in Field 1, Field 2 would not show up.

I want to know if it's possible to do this portal trick with global fields or if I'm doing something wrong. Or, if anybody has an alternate solution that makes Field 2 hidden unless Field 1 displays "Yes", I would appreciate any help.

Thanks!

A global field or unstored calc can not be used as a match key on the child side of a relationship.

Oh boo. Is there a good way to do the same thing without using portals?

What exactly are you trying to do? I can't make heads or tails out of your description. Can you explain the issue in less abstract terms, perhaps with an example?

In simplest terms, I want to conditionally hide a field based on another field's value. In this case, I want to see Field 2 if Field 1 shows "Yes" from a Yes/No popup menu, but I want Field 2 to be completely hidden if Field 1 displays "No" or is blank.

Clearly I can't do that with portal since I'm using global fields. I'm now asking if there is a good way to conditionally hide Field 2

You can do this with a portal. Define a calculation field cShowID =

Case ( Field 1 = "Yes" ; SerialID )

and a self join relationship:

YourTable::cShowID = YourTable 2::SerialID

Place a one-row portal to YourTable 2 on the layout of YourTable and put whatever you want to hide in this portal.

That sounds like what I tried before and it worked. It didn't seem to work when I changed my fields to globals

The Yes/No field can be global. Any other field can be global, too - except SerialID, of course.

Can you explain in a little more detail? I'm still very new to this program, having only used it for a few weeks.

I'd like to know how many fields I need, what type they will be, how many tables/table occurences I will need and how they fit together.

You have been very helpful, so thank you very much ???

I thought that's what I did earlier. See if the attached makes it clearer.

NOTE:

If the Show field is global (as in my file), it affects all records. If it's not, then each record will remember its show/hide state.

Visibility.fp7.zip

ok I see now. Thanks for your help!